Thank you all who attended the 10th Anniversary Developers Chat earlier today. For those of you who missed it, our crack team of log monkeys have been hard at work to bring you a full log of the chat. We'd like to give the members of Sony Online Entertainment in attendance a special THANK YOU! Without you, none of this is possible. You'll find said log after the jump. Here's to another ten years of EverQuest!

@Tamat - Hello my name is Andrew Beegle and it's my privilege to be with you hosting this developer chat as we celebrate ten amazing years of EverQuest!

@Tamat - Since its St. Patrick's Day and we're celebrating the 10th Anniversary of EverQuest. Please be patient as most of us have already been drinking.

* @Tamat takes a drink of ale *

* @Bludwyng takes a drink of ale *

* @Bludwyng spits green beer everywhere *

@Tamat - For good measure, I'll been sitting in the Ocean of Tears hanging out with some old friends for the duration of this chat. Feel free to train me if you're on the Firiona Vie server.

@Tamat - Before I introduce our guests from Sony Online Entertainment, I'd like to direct your attention to the members of our staff who work so hard to mute and potentially kick you if you get out of line.

@Tamat - The first of which needs no introduction. Please welcome Jeff Moyer -- Allakhazam himself!

* +[EQ]Zatozia cheers! *

@Allakhazam - Hey everyone

@Allakhazam - I just want to say how amazing it is that the small EQ guide I started is somehow still around and able to host the 10th Anniversary dev chat for EQ. Kudos to all our great staff members who have put this together and a huge congratulations to SOE for creating such a great game.

* @Bludwyng applauds *

* @Tamat cheers *

* @Allakhazam takes another drink *

@Tamat - Additionally we're proud to have the Content Manager of our EverQuest site, Railus, as well as ZAM Associate Editor, Christopher "Pwyff" Tom and Bill "Bludwyng" Smith, Sr. Wikibase Administrator.

@Pwyff - Hi

@Bludwyng - Hello, everyone

* @Bludwyng passes out ferret treats *

@Pwyff - Man, I totally panicked, I was supposed to say something funny....

* @Bludwyng slaps Pwyff around a bit with a large trout *

* @Pwyff cries in the corner *

@Railus - Hello everyone! A pleasure to be at your service!

@Tamat - Keep riding the fail train sir.

@Pwyff - ;(

@Tamat - Now that we've introduced the ZAM team, let's hear from the representatives from Sony Online Entertainment!

* @Bludwyng applause wildly! *

* +Amnerys waves! *

+Bembaru - Hi, I'm Bembaru. A coder on EQ. As such, I have nothing funny to say.

+Ngreth - Hello! I am Adam "Ngreth" Bell, Tradeskills, Items and general content designer.

+Amnerys - Hello from the Community Relations team! :)

+Nodyin - Hello, I'm David Ford and I work as a Designer for EverQuest

+RytanEQ - Hi I'm Ryan Barker, EverQuest Lead Designer

+sklug - Hey guys. Steve Klug, Lead Programmer.

+Aristo - I'm Ed Hardin, I do general content, items, and I run patches.

+[EQ]Absor - Hello everyone. I'm Alan VanCouvering, known as Absor on the boards. I'm the Assistant Lead Designer on EQ. Thanks for joining us today.

+EQ-Raramor - John "Raramor" Boomershine, EQ Designer

+Prathun - Hello everyone! I'm Jonathan Caraker, designer on EverQuest... 10 years
ago tomorrow I picked up a copy of EQ and a few short years later I was helping make the game. It's been an amazing ride.

* @Allakhazam waves at all the Devs *

+[EQ]Zatozia - Hey all, I'm Zatozia, your friendly in a torturing sort of way neighborhood Community Manager.

+JChan - Hello, I'm J. Chan, a Senior Programmer on EverQuest.

* @Tamat passes everyone an ale. *

@Tamat - During the chat feel free to submit questions that may or may not be answered. You can do so by typing: /msg #questions "Your Question Here".

@Tamat - Our apologies in advance if we don't ask your question. We wish we could ask them all but there just simply isn't enough time to do so.

@Tamat - Now without further ado, on to the questions! In the first segment, questions will focus around the first 10 years of EverQuest.

@Tamat - Reorx asks: What is one of your most memorable moments from the game as a player?

+Nodyin - My most memorable moment has to be camping the JBoots when I was level 20 in 1999. I came home from my job, got "in line" and waited a few hours to get a group. I was there for almost 29 hours and never got the boots! The next day I swore I'd never do it again but next week, sure enough, I was back. I go them the second time after about 12 more hours sitting in Najena.

+Nodyin - There were some great raid fights I was lucky enough to be part of but that long boring camp is my most memorable EQ moment.

@Tamat - ColinnBartender asks: One of the best qualities that EQ has is the seemingly parallel balance of its classes. What were the biggest obstacles during the 10 year run to ensure that no class drastically out-powered another, yet allowed them to still be able to work together so efficiently?

+Prathun - As we've learned during the development of the game, balance is more of a journey than a destination.

+Prathun - EverQuest is a living, breathing creature, growing with each expansion pack and each patch. With each iteration, the balance of the game shifts... content and ability additions and tweaks creating a new environment.

+RytanEQ - I think the biggest hurdle was just the number of classes that we have available. The number of classes is definitely an N^2 problem. There have definitely been ups and downs to every classes development over the years. That's the nice thing about an MMO though, you can continually tweak stuff as the game moves forward and maintain that balance.

+RytanEQ - Really though you could write volumes and volumes about various points in class balance history and how the content effected it, etc etc. It's impossible to answer completely in this format.

@Tamat - minimind asks: Happy 10th! How have developer tools changed (or not) over the years and how much easier, or difficult, is it to make new events and quests in comparison to the early years?

+Prathun - Hands down, the greatest addition to our designer toolset was the scripting system that was introduced during Planes of Power.

+Prathun - It's what has allowed us to create interesting and compelling content for the past 7 years - anything above and beyond a boss with AEs and circumstantial adds was created with the assistance of the scripting engine.

+[EQ]Absor - I'd have to say it was Planes of Power. This was the big-scope, big raid expansion. EQ is known for several things, but one of the biggest is the idea of Raids. Even though raiding really started with Naggy and Vox, those weren't really built so much as "raids". PoP was the expansion that gave us raids, full force.

+[EQ]Absor - Of course it's more than that. It was a huge expansion with a story-driven theme, more so than those that came before. And you got to see the gods (and kill them). Each plane was totally different than the others. Each was very unique. The volume of design concepts in that expansion was massive. It really changed the way we all looked at the game.

+[EQ]Absor - I've heard others, like LDoN, which introduced instancing and was huge for group content (I loved it). And others may say Gates of Discord, for entirely negative reasons. For me, it's PoP.

+Ngreth - For me it was Planes of Power. It really brought raiding to what it is like today, as well as an extra ease to getting around the world. It brought tradeskills out as a real force. Overall it was huge.

+Bembaru - I'd agree with Absor on PoP, but because it changed the way people moved in the world. No more running for 20 minutes.

@Tamat - Furball-Xegony asks: What is each developer's favorite Raid Encounter designed over the years?

+Ngreth - he favorite one I designed is Discord Tower Stasis Raid. The minor puzzle that it creates fits in with what I like to do.

+Prathun - I'm biased on this, but I'm very partial to Inktuta. I was given a lot of time and a lot of freedom to run with the design of that zone and crafted some unique raids that broke the mold of raid design, focusing on strategy, while also telling a story that unfolded over the course of the zone.

+Nodyin - My favorite raid to design is a tie. I really loved working on "Two Gods" in Solteris. It was one of my first "big" raids, and it was beyond crazy. Every dirty trick I could think of I added to that raid, and it was fun to watch people enjoy the event. My other favorite raid is the Field of Scale Raid - Jaled`Dar's Sacrifice. The implementation was challenging, to say the least, but I had a lot of support from the art and code teams.

+Nodyin - It turned into something really special, I think.

+RytanEQ - My favorite's the Rallos Zek raid in plane of Tactics, although the Ralkor Bloodmoon Raid is a close second. I always had a fascination with Zek lore so it was really cool to be able to put that zone and raid together.

@Tamat - Gendortime asks: What is your favorite zone to play in?

+Prathun - Tower of Frozen Shadow!

+Aristo - Blackburrow!

+[EQ]Elidroth - Temple of Veeshan without a doubt.

+[EQ]Zatozia - Blackburrow!

@Bludwyng - Blackburrow, ftw. :)

+sklug - Burned Woods!

+[EQ]Absor - lol

+Amnerys - Oasis :)

* +[EQ]Zatozia snickers *

+[EQ]Elidroth - lol @ sklug

+EQ-Raramor - Old Field of Bone!

+Ngreth - For me, it was actually Vex Thal, for the challenge it was at the time it came out.

+RytanEQ - I'd have to go with Charasis the Howling Stones. I like the winged layouts with varying degrees of difficulty. I really like Iksar lore as well so that certainly helped.

* +Prathun gives Blackburrow the thumbs down. *

+sklug - Actually, Howling Stones was always one of my favorite zones as well.

+Prathun - The unique tiered areas, dungeon crawl feel, and progression in ToFS was amazing.

+RytanEQ - well if 2 leads like it...it must be cool.

+[EQ]Elidroth - Howling Stones rocked

* @Tamat is sad that no one said Guk or Ssra *

+RytanEQ - I would have said Sssraasdashzka, but I can't spell it.

+Aristo - I really liked Arcstone as well, for where I was when it was introduced.

@Tamat - Furball-Xegony asks: In the past 10 years the graphics engine has been through many upgrades. Do the devs envision a major overhaul in the coming years?

+sklug - We do not envision a complete overhaul of the graphics engine. However we are constantly making tweaks and improvements to performance. We will be working to further address our global memory problem soon (tm) which could potentially result in improved performance for some people.

@Tamat - That concludes our first segment. We'll now be focusing on questions about the live game, in addition to the future of EverQuest.

@Tamat - Remianen asks: There have been promises of other mercenaries being introduced (DPS, CC, Slower, etc). Was that a campaign promise? Are those new mercenaries going to require an additional purchase (like say, in the next expansion)?

+RytanEQ - While we've mentioned before that we'd like to do other types of mercenaries, we were always very clear that they we did not have a time frame for when they would get added. We still think additional mercenary types would be a great addition to the game, it's just a question of resources and prioritizing them on the long list of development tasks.

@Tamat - Crowchaser asks: Scale-by-level content was introduced with LDON. How about a similar system for raids? Change the level of mobs not by average level of the raid, but by pure numbers. There are 12, 24, etc man raids, so why not have the same raid available for 12, 24, 36 people? Lesser guilds would still be able to see the same end content. The bigger the raid, the more drops per encounter?

+Nodyin - Adding HP, adding damage to the NPC, even increasing the number of NPCs in an encounter doesn't have a set ratio to difficulty

+Nodyin - It's the mechanics of an event that determine the challenge level. If you have enough healers and a minimum gear level that will let you survive an encounter then you've eliminated all the parts of an event that scale easily.

+Bembaru - . o O ( Formulaically, even )

+[EQ]Absor - And scripted tasks, like clicking items or pulling levers can completely mess up a scaling system. 10 levers and only 6 people? Too bad! :)

+Nodyin - I guess my answer would be that we would really need to hand craft and tune each variation that we wanted to create and it would be very time consuming - taking more time than we actually have available.

@Tamat - piggvomit asks: When you say Progression server in the poll, does that mean you will modify it for a timelocked progression server of possibly 6 months? or just regular combine rules again?

+RytanEQ - the progression server on the poll is basically the combine rule set. Although we are going to make an effort to remove the various areas of content that were out of place based on the geography vs. the progression step

+Prathun - Jaggedpine :(

+RytanEQ - the Freeport sewers for instance wouldn't be available till much later.

+RytanEQ - but yes it's basically the same as the combine server.

@Tamat - Dragonmonk asks: What will the new server be and will when it be released?

+RytanEQ - the progression server on the poll is basically the combine rule set. Although we are going to make an effort to remove the various areas of content that were out of place based on the geography vs. the progression step

+Prathun - Jaggedpine :(

+RytanEQ - the Freeport sewers for instance wouldn't be available till much later.

+RytanEQ - but yes it's basically the same as the combine server.

@Tamat - Dragonmonk asks: What will the new server be and will when it be released?

+RytanEQ - That's completely dependant on how the poll turns out. We don't have a specific date set, but I would TENTATIVELY guess at a month or two out.

@Tamat - Crowchaser asks: The guide program is a dying breed of dedicated people. The quests that they have to choose from are old and antiquated. What about allowing the playerbase to submit their own, following certain guidelines and those that make it through are then given to the Guides. This could be a way for the fans to give back and help breath life back into our beloved guides.

+[EQ]Zatozia - First I'd like to say that the Guide Program isn't dying. It is very much still active.

+[EQ]Zatozia - If you have ideas for events you would like to see run or events you want to run on your own that you want further discussion on, you can post them on the EQ Events section of the EQ forums.

+[EQ]Zatozia - I constantly monitor that board for events, whether its requests for the guide program or player-run event ideas.

@Tamat - Kzun asks: What the heck is the Glowing Black Stone used for?!

+Aristo - +9 int, baby.

+Prathun - It's hard to say, exactly, what the Glowing Black Stone is for. Rumors and speculation abound, but I'm inclined to go with...

* @Tamat hated camping Pyzjn *

+Prathun - +9 INT and +10 SvM

+RytanEQ - not to mention the sexy graphic.

+Prathun - Apparently it has a QUEST tag on it, which is probably a bug, but we can look into it. :)

@Tamat - DanyellaDangerhugs asks: Will we ever be able to reset our AA's somehow? (With some monetary cost - platinum or something - and a limited amount of times only?) Just think of it, some of the AA's we took years ago are really useless now. Some examples: See Invis (higher level headpieces have Faerune on them), Innate Str/Sta/etc (higher levels are overcapped anyway).
+Nodyin - I don't think a /resetAA option will be seen on normal servers.

+Nodyin - There are caps in place (30 saved) for how much AA and normal experience you can store up between expansions, and if a /resetAA was available in any form I expect that a much larger than normal number of people would find themselves "done" with AAs in fairly short order each time AAs are released.

+Nodyin - While it's fun for a while to get all the cool new toys right away it tends to lead to players being bored.

+Nodyin - There were more AAs created for SoF and SoD than any other expansion previous to that, and yet there are still large numbers of players who find they "run out" of AAs very quickly after the expansion launches. I wouldn't want to do anything to make that problem "worse."

@Tamat - abmonk asks: Is off-line trading in the Bazaar a possibility?

+sklug - Doing a fully revamped trading system is not something I anticipate happening. However, we have considered the possibility of adding the ability to essentially log-off into a "bazaar" mode where people could still buy things from you in the bazaar. This would not allow you to be selling while you are adventuring, but would at least allow you to turn off your computers, etc. while still having a trader up. This is on our TODO list, but I have no current eta.

@Tamat - Foustes asks: Why did leadership points die out? We haven't seen anything new with leadership points, but there are several things I could see that could help. Give me a more expanded health of target's target. If you have a few ranks in it, let me see my aggro score and if someone is getting close. (I play a tank)

+Nodyin - The best answer to this question is that every time an idea has come up for a "good" Leadership AA it usually just ends up being integrated into the standard UI for free.

+Nodyin - We could lock away UI improvements but lately it's just made more sense to make them available for free.

@Tamat - Driftwood asks: Could you possibly update the merchants so that they actually buy the assorted silks, animal pelts, etc. that drop off of literally everything? They're quite irritating and some of us refuse to put up a trader in Bazaar as we come home from work 4 hours later to find that we've been booted offline.

+Ngreth - That is actually based on the item, not the merchant. We specifically made the decision that we do not want players buying these from NPC merchants, even if sold by players and the only way we have to do that without additional code changes is to have the item be zero value, and merchants do not buy zero value items. These items are intended for a player market only.

@Tamat - Mediik asks: The new quest piece merchant for SOD was a great addition. Are there any plans to expand on this system to help free up bank/inventory space?

+Ngreth - We do plan on continuing to use this for future content. It does not scale well backwards because it depends on flags that were not always used in older content. If I get time I want to add an NPC for SoF, but that is as far back as we can go.

@Tamat - KungFuHamster asks: Can we get webcasts of some of the Fan Faire events? I really enjoyed the dev round tables when I attended, and I can't attend this year because of timing issues.

+Amnerys - At past Fan Faires, some of the fansites have done videos of panels, I believe, and I know several have done full transcripts, so that's a great way to get the info out for those who miss it.

+Amnerys - We'll also be posting polls and suggestion threads on the forums, so feel free to suggest that there. Maybe it's possible. :)

+Amnerys - Look for more Fan Faire feedback threads soon on the official forums.

@Tamat - Our last question of the night isn't actually a question

@Tamat - it's a statement

@Tamat - naraFV asks: I want player-owned ships in the future!

+Prathun - You have completed the task: "Swab the poop deck and hoist the mainsail".

+Prathun - You receive 5 pieces of eight.

@Bludwyng - yo ho ho

+EQ-Raramor - Your parrot mocks you.

+Bembaru - You have achievement Poop Swabber.

+[EQ]Elidroth - You receive a jaunty eye patch

+Prathun - Your reputation with the scurvy scalliwags has improved!

+sklug - I think there's a little boat in Lake Rath. You can own it as long as you can keep anyone else from stealing it.

+EQ-Raramor - Your Dark Elf cabin boy grows restless.

+Aristo - ..

+[EQ]Elidroth - if you get 8 pieces of 8.. is that an entire 8?

@Tamat - Well that about wraps it up for the questions. I'd like to give a special thanks to all the folks from Sony Online Entertainment for taking the time to hang out with us in IRC.

+Nodyin - Thanks everyone.

@Tamat - Happy St. Patrick's Day! HORRAY FOR TEN MORE YEARS OF EVERQUEST!

+[EQ]Zatozia - Thank you for joining us everyone!

+EQ-Raramor - Thanks all!

+[EQ]Absor - Thanks to everyone that has played EQ for the last 10 years, or any part of it.

+Aristo - Thanks for coming.

+Amnerys - Thanks for tuning in! We'll see you in Norrath! :)

+Prathun - Thanks for coming, everyone. (The Glowing Black Stone is apparently part of a quest in the Stonebrunt Mountains, by the way...)

+Bembaru - (and it keeps your shoe warm.)

@Bludwyng - Be sure to join us over in #eq-ffa, if you are not already there, for unmoderated chat-time with some of the devs

+Ngreth - Thanks for a great 10 years!

+[EQ]Elidroth - Thanks all.. thanks for giving US 10 years..

+[EQ]Zatozia - Parties on the servers starting tomorrow.. View the schedule